Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to keep our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
